A Better Virtual – USA Virtual Offices

If you are looking for a virtual office provider with some breadth—and depth—you should take a look at CESVirtualOffices. The company bills itself as “the ultimate office solution” with 130 locations in seven states.

The difference between the CES virtual office and some of its competitors is the fullness of its package. The CES virtual program includes a live receptionist who answers your calls, a corporate mailing address in a strategic location, a phone number with two mailboxes and a fax number, voice mail that is transcribed and sent as e-mail, fax that coverts to e-mail, call paging, message notification and call forwarding services.

How much, you ask? Just $99 a month—unless you need more than two voice mailboxes. If you need to add additional extensions, those run $25 a month each.

CESVirtualOffices has been around the block. The company was founded in 1997 to provide an alternative to traditional office space. CES designed its own software to incorporate sophisticated features companies need to remain professional even while working from home offices or other remote locations.

What CES Customers Are Saying
One of the best ways to get to know the company is by hearing what its customers say….

“I looked at many virtual offices companies and really liked CES Virtual Offices because they do not have any small print in their contracts. Overnight I was able to open multiple operational virtual offices in Atlanta, Tampa and Miami. I was also really surprised at the personal and professional care that their staff gives our clients,” says Barry Berko.

Here’s another from Grady Herring: “From the first day of inquiring about services to the third week when I finally decided to join the CES Virtual Office family as a tenant until today I have received the most timely and courteous business quality support. The team has made everyone from my callers to persons I have meeting with feel like they are at HAC (Herring Advisors & Consultants) and they all compliment my staff and me, and have helped our reputation grow.”

If you are in Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina, Virginia, Delaware, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Florida, New York or South Carolina and need a full-service virtual office, CESVirtualOffices might be a good place to start looking.

my1voice is one of the most reputable virtual phone systems companies in the market today. The service is solid and dependable. But what do you do when you need more than an 800 number (or local number or global number)?

Well, if you need a click-to-call option, my1Voice has you covered. my1Voice offers a “Call Me” button.  Also known as click-to-call with other vendors, you can place a Call Me button or link on your Web site or in your e-mail signature. my1voice will connect the caller to you at a click of a mouse button.

This is a great solution if you have an e-commerce site. Some customers are still averse to entering credit card numbers online and if your phone number isn’t easy to find, you could lose a sale. With the Call Me button, you make it especially easy for customers to reach out to you with questions about a product or to place an order.

In fact, any small business that wants to engage in a conversation with prospects and clients can benefit from the Call Me button. And think of it this way: When you get a call from the Call Me button, you’ve got a live one on your hands. In other words, you’ve got a qualified lead. It’s then up to you to close the deal.

Of course, there are other companies who can offer this type of service, including Click To Call and Bold Call. You can even use Google Voice to set up a click-to-call service for free. The point is, this takes virtual phone systems to the next level. If you want to go there, you have plenty of options.

Good news for Phone.com customers this month: the virtual phone system provider is helping travelers slash roaming charges. That’s right, one of the leading virtual PBX companies is making it possible for you to forever do away with the fees associated with roaming by using your virtual number and call forwarding.

The Phone.com best practice works this way:

1. Get a Phone.com virtual office account.
2. Start giving people your Phone.com phone number for everything, rather than your business line, your home line or your cell phone line. This will let you tap into Phone.com’s call handling features that let you decide when you will take calls, where they will be forwarded and so on.
3. Set your call handling rules. You can choose to have your calls forwarded to your desk during business hours, and send them to your mobile phone during lunch hours or after hours with a few clicks of your mouse. Or, you can have all your calls go directly to voicemail.

The Overseas Advantage

With Phone.com, you are even covered when you travel overseas. You just have to get a global number, which costs about $5 a month. This way you can dial that number and you’ll be able to reach any U.S. phone you want to forward a number to.

By having a global number, you can also let your clients in, say, England call you on that international line and have it forward directly to your phone. Your client will be charged for a local call and your flat monthly fee minute plan covers it. That means no international long distance rates.

Of course, you can cut roaming charges with other virtual phone systems as well. Phone.com has gotten out of the gate with this messaging to bring awareness to the roaming masses. But if you are using RingCentral, my1Voice or some other virtual phone system, it’s likely that you can do the same set up. Check with your operator for more details.

There’s nothing much more prestigious in the business world than a Beverly Hills address. But renting office space in Beverly Hills could break the bank of your start-up.

What’s an aspiring entrepreneur to do? Rent virtual office space from a company like Virtual Office Centers. Virtual Office Centers helps you create a professional image for your business, including that 90210 address, conference room availability, voicemail services and other virtual office space perks.

For just $95 a month you can get a Basic Identity Plan. That includes a professional mailing address, access to on-site administrative and secretarial support and access to meeting rooms and fully furnished offices. Of course, the administrative support and office space cost more, but the monthly fee gives you the right to rent it on demand.

Virtual Office Centers also offers a Telephone Identity Plan starting at $175 a month that gives you everything in the basic package, plus a dedicated telephone number with personalized telephone answering during normal business hours. At the upper end of the scale, you can rent a full-fledged virtual office that comes with access to a professionally furnished office that you can use for up to 16 hours a month for $300. That’s still a steal for Beverly Hills.

Need a different location in California? Virtual Office Centers also offers virtual office space in San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego, San Bernardino and Orange County, to name a few. Virtual Office Centers also operates in Washington, Texas and Florida, so if you are traveling you can tap into a trusted brand while on the run.

Virtual Office Centers offers a no-risk money back 30-day free trial. As the company explains it, if you sign up for one of the company’s part-time office plans, telephone and mail plans or mail plans and you aren’t completely satisfied, you can cancel the plan and get a full refund—so long as you do it within 30 days.

RingCentral, best known for its cloud computing-based virtual business phone systems, just released the results of a survey that it says marks the changing nature of business communications. The overarching result: the smartphone is an integral part of daily life and is having a dramatic impact on personal life.

That’s so obvious it’s almost not worth surveying. But what I did find interesting was that the majority of the mobile workforce said they would rather give up their morning coffee than their smartphones. About 80 percent said they use a smartphone most to conduct business, compared to an office or home phone. And 34 percent use a smartphone more than a computer for business. RingCentral’s findings suggest it’s all about productivity.

“This survey demonstrates the critical role smartphones play in business. The passion business professionals have for these devices reflects a major shift in the way we work, and the new reality is that businesses do not have to choose between mobility and professionalism,” says Vlad Shmunis, CEO of RingCentral.

Now here’s the payoff for this virtual phone system provider: RingCentral is positioning itself as a virtual phone system that lets people do business anywhere and everywhere though its cloud-based structure. RingCentral is marketing its business class virtual phone system as capable and flexible, and one that can travel with road warriors at a fraction of the cost of traditional phone systems.

“RingCentral is designed to meet the needs of today’s professional–delivering the power of a complete business phone system for the mobile world,” Shmunis says. “The best part is that businesses do not need to spend a single dollar in capital expenditure to have anywhere, anytime world class communications.”

RingCentral is definitely one of the most respected, best virtual phone system companies out there. RingCentral has venture capital backing and cutting edge technology. Many believe the company will dominate the market for enterprises looking for a virtual phone system. Time will tell.

Virtual offices are a good alternative for struggling businesses. So says an article by reporter Christina Boomer on ABC15.com, a news affiliate that serves television viewers in Phoenix, Arizona.

Boomer’s story chronicles the decision of Mark Deitchman, a commercial insurance broker, to find a way that his struggling clients could keep a professional image even though they had to shut down their physical offices and begin working from the home front. His idea: Virtual Office Arizona (VOA). He already has about 10 clients.

“The virtual office market in Phoenix has a number of major competitors offering major suites of services. They are focused on those businesses with some major expendable budget,” Deitchman says. “However, there is a major market segment that is not served. That market includes the entrepreneur working on a shoe string; the home based business; the multi-level marketer; sales reps and so on. That is the focus of VOA, the businessperson with a limited budget but one that could greatly benefit by having an office address, affordable telephone service, mail service and more.”

Virtual Office Arizona charges $99 a month. Clients share the office address 15815 South 46th Street in Phoenix. The company is so new, it’s Web site isn’t finished yet. When it comes online, you can find it at VirtualOfficeArizona.com.

Of course, Virtual Office Arizona is going to be competing with the likes of Davinci Virtual, Regus and others in the Phoenix market. So it’s difficult to predict whether Deitchman, who has no experience in this field, will succeed in the local market. Ten clients is a good start, but it’s not exactly a strong business.

Virtual Office Arizona is not competing well on price in Phoenix. It’s not far and away below the prices of his competitors. But the advantage Deitchman has is the opportunity to pitch his clients on the idea, who may tell their friends. Personal relationships go a long way in business.

In our last installment, we compared the pricing strategies of two reputable virtual phone system companies: VirtualPBX and My1Voice. What we discovered is that My1Voice offers much more competitive pricing. But pricing alone isn’t always the best decision-maker.

Today, we’re going to drill down a few notches into the features and functions of both VirtualPBX and My1Voice to see how they compare.

If you want or need an international virtual number – a local telephone number in a country outside of the U.S. – My1Voice doesn’t have those capabilities. VirtualPBX or another virtual phone system provider would be a better choice. VirtualPBX also offers true Automatic Call Distribution (ACD) queuing while My1Voice offers a Hunt Group.

The advantage of true ACD queuing is that it allows you to forward calls to multiple extensions, keep callers on hold indefinitely or for a period of time you decide, give callers the option to press a button to leave a message if they don’t want to continue holding, and other features not available with most hunt groups.

One advantage My1Voice offers that VirtualPBX doesn’t is click-to-call from the web. Both companies offer conference calling, call screening, call forwarding, message alerts, and voicemail to e-mail. My1Voice also offers you the option of having your voicemail transcribed so you can read it on the go. But, unlike VirtualPBX, My1Voice doesn’t offer answering rules for after hours calls.

All things considered, you can see why VirtualPBX is more costly than My1Voice. It seems to offer somewhat more robust features and functions. Still, My1Voice offers some features VirtualPBX doesn’t. It might be worth it to give both a trial run and see what ultimately suits you the best.

In our continuing quest to compare virtual PBX and virtual phone systems, we come to two reputable companies with competitive offerings: VirtualPBX and My1Voice.

It’s fairly standard now days for virtual phone companies to offer a free 30-day trial. So be sure you take them up on it before you launch into the paying service of any company. So far as prices go, VirtualPBX and My1Voice are fairly equally at $10 a month for the “Professional” subscription. My1Voice cost $5 more a month for the SOHO and small business versions and the company doesn’t offer a corporate subscription. You can get a corporate account from VirtualPBX for $95 a month.

Although the pricing is fairly equally, the minute plans are not. VirtualPBX offers far fewer minutes across the board. VirtualPBX offers 100 minutes in the Professional plan versus 150 minutes from My1Voice. VirtualPBX offers 500 minutes for the SOHO plan and 1,000 minutes for the small business plan compared to 1,000 minutes and 2,000 minutes respectively for My1Voice.

If that’s not enough to turn your heard, consider the cost of going over your minute plan. VirtualPBX charges 6.5 cents for overage compared to 5 cents for My1Voice. And if you want additional incoming lines, that’ll cost you more too. VirtualPBX charges $10 a month while My1Voice charges $5 a month.

Now, the potential downside to My1Voice is that the company doesn’t offer true 800 numbers. You can get one from VirtualPBX for $25. By contrast, both companies offer vanity 800 numbers. My1Voice gives you this option for free. It’ll cost you $25 at VirtualPBX.

All in all, it’s easy to see that My1Voice offers the more competitive offering and the company’s customer service is reportedly good. But pricing isn’t everything. That’s why tomorrow we’ll dive into the feature sets of both offerings and compare apples to apples.

This is just too cool. The iPad as a virtual office… For all the hype about the iPad for watching movies and surfing the Net, it seems like this nifty device might also be suited for road warriors who rely on virtual offices to keep the lines of communication open.

Citrix Systems, best known for GoToMeeting Apps, launched two iPad apps in the AppStore: Citrix Receiver and Citrix GoToMeeting. That lets road warriors take the virtual office mobile. Let’s take a quick look at each offering:

The Citrix Receiver App for iPad aims to make it easy for iPad owners to take a virtual office with them anywhere they go. The app sets the stage for secure access to all of their corporate applications and documents.  Meanwhile, the Citrix GoToMeeting App for iPad lets iPad owners collaborate with anyone in the world from anywhere in the world.

Mark Templeton, president and CEO, Citrix Systems, called the iPad ideal for mobile businesses to use as a compliment to the corporate desktop: “These Citrix Apps for iPad make it possible for teleworkers in any industry to get easy access to their corporate resources and collaborate wherever they are located, giving the business consumer the power of choice.”

Will Google and Microsoft launch their own iPad rivals and help take the mobile virtual office mainstream? The New York Times is reporting plenty of competition emerging for the iPad.  If the rumors are true—and if more business apps keep rolling out with communications and productivity in mind—tablet style devices could be the virtual office user’s new best friend.

Southern California Public Radio is taking a look at virtual offices. The article is entitled, “Virtual offices have heir perks, drawbacks.”

Reporter Brittany Knotts looks at how the nine to five office job isn’t as common as it once was with the rise of technologies that allow people to work from home. Specifically Knotts follows Inc. magazine’s virtual office experiment, but also talks to others about their experiences with virtual offices.

Some of Knotts’ takeaways:

“Virtual offices may save money for businesses and save hours of time lost in a commute (not to mention cut back on emissions), but there are things lost. A caller pointed out that if there were no offices, clerical and janitorial positions would be cut. So while businesses would save money, people would lose jobs.”

In this economy, that’s a tough balance. No one wants to cut jobs, but many businesses need to save money. But virtual offices can also bridge the gap for growing companies that can’t quite afford a traditional office space. Virtual offices can be a stepping stones, of sorts, for entrepreneurs. Virtual offices can also be helpful to larger companies that want to expand into new territories without the overhead of launching a physical office.

Knotts final conclusion based on her interviews: there are pros and cons to virtual offices, just like with anything else. But with so little financial risk, a virtual office is a great place for an entrepreneur or small business owner who still wants a professional business address and access to meeting rooms to start.